I promised to give Ghent University the “benefit of the doubt” before writing a full piece about the Cofnas affair, by waiting for the temporary suspension to expire and hoping they’d come to their senses. Reliable sources now tell me that @UGent has extended @nathancofnas’s #CofnasAffair #UGent #HigherEducation #BE
Harvard closed its writing center and layed off the center’s longtime director for financial motives, a decision that could trigger other universities to follow suit, concluding than original writing –by extension, original thought– isn't worth the cost https://t.co/ux0NOjVZml #Harvard #WritingCenter #HigherEd #Nocountrycodesarementionedinthetweet.
What if Northanger Abbey is more than a playful Gothic parody — and almost an early literary escape room? Behind the locked doors, imagined dangers and mysterious corridors, Jane Austen is also writing about curiosity, reading, interpretation and the stories we create from incomplete clues. Sometimes the real mystery is not what is hidden in the house — but how we decide what to believe. #NorthangerAbbey #JaneAusten #EscapeRoom #GothicLiterature #ClassicLiterature #reading #ReaderPsychology #CriticalThinking #LiteraryMystery #Interpretation #English
Bio-ethicist Jeff McMahan's academic writings on the Gaza war "stand out for extraordinary carelessness, incoherence, and what appears to be obsessive prejudice". They function as a "force multiplier for an academic hate-laundering machinery already operating at full speed, https://t.co/cEPMN27OaR #GazaWar #AcademicIntegrity #BioEthics #IL
"We need far more transparency when it comes to AI-assisted writing. In my experience, very few people who have been accused of AI plagiarism by Pangram have come clean about it. At best, they claim to have used AI only to lightly polish their writing (which I do all the time, https://t.co/6g7jwuiePz #AITransparency #Plagiarism #WritingCommunity #Therearenospecificcountryreferencesinthetweetyouprovided.Therefore #therearenocountrycodestoreturn.
“If AI writing becomes so good that it is no longer distinguishable from human writing (except by being far superior to it), should we care? Will we all be reading AI slop soon, with human writing becoming a niche artisanal craft for anti-AI snobs?” https://t.co/DIWFbuY4qD #AIwriting #HumanVsAI #FutureOfLiterature #Nospecificcountriesarementionedinthetweet.
Executions continue in Iran. At least 71 people were executed in July alone. I am writing to High Representative @kajakallas to call for expanded EU sanctions, in line with the European Parliament’s resolution, and greater accountability for those responsible for repression. #IranExecutions #Sanctions #HumanRights #IR #EU
I've already replaced my proofreader, my accountant and my legal advisor with AI. Am I next in line? Maybe. But when a chatbot spits out your "think pieces", there's nobody home — no author to argue with, no one answerable for a word of it. And writing is thinking: if you #AI #Writing #Creativity #Nocountrycodesfound.
The Horizon of Reason: Finding Meaning in Atheism. Good day, everyone. When people hear the word "atheism," they often think of what it lacks. They focus on the prefixes and the definitions: a lack of belief in a deity. But to view atheism only as an absence is to miss the entire landscape of what it actually builds. Today, I want to talk about atheism not as a void, but as a vibrant, deeply responsible, and profoundly hopeful way of looking at our universe. At its core, atheism is a commitment to radical honesty. It is the decision to look at the vast, beautiful, and sometimes terrifying cosmos and say, "I do not know all the answers, and I will not invent stories to fill the gaps." Atheism relies on evidence, reason, and the scientific method. It is driven by the same curiosity that makes a child look through a microscope or a scientist peer through a telescope. It embraces uncertainty. In uncertainty, there is room for growth, discovery, and learning. When we accept that we do not have a cosmic blueprint, we become actively responsible for writing our own stories. A common misconception is that without a divine entity, there can be no morality. But atheism flips this dynamic. It suggests that kindness, empathy, and justice do not come from a fear of cosmic punishment or a desire for a heavenly reward. They come from us. We are kind to one another because we are social creatures who share this planet. We care for the sick because we know what pain feels like. We fight for justice because we want to live in a fair world. Our morality is human-centered. It is born from the profound realization that this life is all we have, and therefore, how we treat each other right now matters more than anything else. To an atheist, this life is not a dress rehearsal for an afterlife. It is the main event. This realization does not make life meaningless; it makes life infinitely more precious. Think about a rare gem. It is beautiful precisely because it is scarce. In the same way, a single human life—spanning just a few decades on a tiny blue planet—is a rare, breathtaking miracle of biology and physics. Because we believe this is our only chance, the time we spend with our families, the art we create, and the love we give become urgently important. We cannot afford to waste a single day. Atheism is not about tearing down anyone else's faith. It is about building up human potential. It is the belief that humanity is strong enough, smart enough, and kind enough to navigate the dark corners of the universe together, guided by reason and compassion. We are the authors of our purpose, the journey, life itself. We are the guardians of this planet. And we are the keepers of one another. Thank you.
Toen ik naar Nederland kwam, sprak ik nog geen Nederlands. Ik begon aan mijn opleiding tot sociaal werker en ging werken in de maatschappelijke dienstverlening, terwijl ik tegelijkertijd de taal leerde. Inmiddels schrijf ik zelfs mijn rapportages in het Nederlands. Mijn eerste contract was voor slechts zes maanden. Vandaag kreeg ik te horen dat mijn contract met nog een jaar is verlengd. Ik ben ontzettend blij en trots op hoe ver ik ben gekomen. Er valt nog genoeg te leren, zowel in mijn werk als met de Nederlandse taal, maar op momenten als deze besef je hoeveel vooruitgang je al hebt geboekt. Niet slecht voor een Ier. When I came to the Netherlands, I didn't speak Dutch. I started training to become a social worker and working in frontline services, while learning the language at the same time. Today, I'm even writing my reports in Dutch. My initial contract was for just six months. Today, I received the news that it has been extended for another year. I'm incredibly happy and proud of how far I've come. There is still plenty to learn, both professionally and with the Dutch language, but moments like this make you realise how much progress I've already made. Not bad for a lad from Ireland. #SociaalWerk #SocialWork #Nederlands #SociaalWerk #SocialWork #Taalontwikkeling
A Generation That Forgot the Shape of the Square On memory left to die alone By Adham Hasanin Egyptian journalist and political writer, based in the Netherlands In a house near mine, there is a boy of thirteen. Born in 2013 just a few months younger than the July coup itself, younger than the new republic under whose shadow we now live. I asked him once, with no preamble, no test, out of nothing more than passing curiosity: do you know what January was? He answered simply, without hesitation, without any sense that he was missing something: "An old revolution, against Mubarak, right?" Not entirely wrong. But it is everything he knows. The name Tahrir Square means nothing specific to him. The sound of the crowd chanting has no echo in his mind. He does not know that his own family whom he sees every day saying "thank God for stability," who warn him against "chaos" whenever a political headline crosses the screen once, at a moment two years before he was born, went down into the street, betting their entire lives on the possibility that something might change. This article is not about politics. It is about memory, and about who decides what gets told and what is left to die in silence. I. Who Erases the Picture? The first question that comes to mind is the easiest and most deceptive one: who erases this memory? And where do we begin holding them accountable? But the truth is too complex to reduce to a single actor. No one actually erases memory, in the literal sense of the act. There is no ministry called the "Ministry of Forgetting," no presidential decree ordering January struck from the collective consciousness. What happens is simpler than that, and more dangerous at once: the subject is simply never told. School says nothing. The textbook leaps from one period to another without pausing on January for more than two faded lines, composed with deliberate neutrality, devoid of any detail that might make the event feel alive to its young reader. Television no longer has any reason to return to it; the programmes that once hosted witnesses and activists stopped years ago, replaced by an official discourse that mentions January only in passing, as an unfortunate prelude to the "stability" that supposedly followed. And the home the most dangerous link of all has become afraid of the subject. Speech now carries a price, and many families, whether consciously or by sheer survival instinct, have decided that silence is safer than the story. The father who marched fears passing on to his son a curiosity that might one day lead him into trouble the family cannot afford. The mother who lost a friend in the events prefers not to reopen the wound before a child who does not yet grasp the weight of loss. And so, generation after generation, the circle of those who know shrinks, and the circle of those who do not even ask because they do not know there is anything worth asking widens. No one decided to erase the memory through an explicit decision. The memory was simply left to die alone, with no one tending it. And it is precisely this decentralised absence of responsibility that makes this kind of erasure more dangerous than any direct official ban: there is no single decision to challenge, no single body to hold accountable. Responsibility is distributed across thousands of small decisions made by thousands of individuals, each within their own context, each seeming reasonable when viewed in isolation. II. Why This Is More Dangerous Than Direct Repression An objection might be raised: is direct repression arrest, imprisonment, publishing bans not far more lethal than mere gradual forgetting? The answer is complex, and deserves calm unpacking. Direct repression can be seen. It can be documented, and the victim can know they are a victim, can tell their story, and their pain can become a testimony added to the collective memory, even if it never reaches justice. The political prisoner knows he is a political prisoner. The journalist banned from writing knows he is banned, and can tell the world he is banned. Direct repression, for all its cruelty, leaves a trace that can be followed. But a generation that has forgotten something happened at all does not even have a starting point from which to ask. This thirteen-year-old boy will never ask "why were we repressed?" because he does not know there is anything deserving that question in the first place. He feels no absence, because he does not know there is anything absent. He simply lives in a version of reality stripped of an entire chapter of his country’s history, and never for a moment suspects that this void is a void at all. Here lies the essence of the danger: direct repression creates victims who know they are victims. Erasure of memory, when it succeeds, creates a generation that does not even know it has been deprived of anything. And deprivation that is not felt cannot be resisted, because resistance always begins with an awareness of loss. The regime that came after 2013 does not need to convince the new generation that January was a mistake. That would be an arduous, costly task, requiring sustained propaganda and continuous effort to persuade each individual one by one. It is far easier, and strategically far more efficient, simply to ensure they never know it was anything at all. The void requires no defence; it requires only silence, and silence is free and always available. III. The Four Mechanisms of Erasure Four complementary mechanisms can be identified working together to produce this collective void not as an organised conspiracy, but as a system of incentives that pushes each party, consciously or not, to contribute to the same process. The first mechanism: formal education. The curriculum, as currently designed, treats January as a passing footnote rather than a founding event deserving detail and analysis. The student memorises two dates the start of the revolution and its presumed end without understanding why people took to the streets, what they were demanding, or how they felt in that pivotal moment. The second mechanism: broadcast media. The channels that once hosted live discussions on January, featuring varied perspectives, have gradually disappeared, or transformed their discourse entirely. Today’s televised image either ignores the anniversary altogether, or invokes it only to frame it as a prelude to chaos that must be avoided. The third mechanism: the silence of homes. This is the most dangerous of all, precisely because it is the most human and understandable. Parents who lived through the experience protect it with silence, not out of aversion to the story, but out of fear of its price. This silence, however legitimate its motives, achieves exactly the same effect as official censorship: it blocks the transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next. The fourth mechanism: the absence of alternative spaces. Even those among the new generation who wish to know cannot easily find places to look. Archives are scattered, trustworthy websites are blocked or require effort to reach, and personal testimonies are dispersed across corners of the internet that an ordinary student at an ordinary school will never stumble upon. These four mechanisms require no central coordination to work together. Each naturally serves the others, and all converge on a single result: a growing void in the consciousness of every new generation. IV. Memory as an Act of Resistance If erasure operates without a centre, then resisting it must also be decentralised. No one waits for a government decision to restore January to the curriculum, nor for a television programme to revive the testimonies. Resistance here is necessarily individual, happening in small details, in passing conversations, in the simple decision to tell rather than to stay silent. This is exactly what I try to do, without any claim to heroism, without any grand mission. I try, whenever I can, to tell the thirteen-year-old boy and others like him details that are never written in official reports or in schoolbooks: what the voices in the square sounded like, how someone felt the first time they realised change was possible, what that moment of hope was like before everything changed. The goal is not to bring back the past; the past cannot be brought back. The goal is that this boy, when he grows older and asks again and he will ask, because the questions always return at some point finds someone to tell him the full story, not two faded lines in a schoolbook. That he knows the stability he is told is the fruit of "wisdom" has a prior history, that this history carried other possibilities, and that real people bet their lives on those possibilities. V. Why This Matters Now Talking about the memory of a generation not yet aware might seem an intellectual luxury next to more urgent matters: arrests, a collapsing economy, regional wars. But the truth is that this issue is the foundation on which every other issue is built. A people who do not know they once rose up will not understand why they should ever think of rising again. A generation raised to believe "stability" is the only natural state possible will never ask itself what drove its own parents, shortly before it was born, to risk everything for an alternative that was never guaranteed. Memory is not a luxury; it is the reference point by which every generation measures its present, and through which it determines what is possible and what is not. And whoever understands this understands why erasing memory, not direct repression alone, is among the most important tools of any regime seeking to guarantee its permanence: because a people who have forgotten they were once free will not even know they are missing freedom. Memory, like the word, needs someone to tell it in order to survive. And when the tellers stop, memory does not die suddenly; it withers slowly, generation after generation, until the day comes when a boy asks an innocent question, and finds no one to answer him but two faded lines in a schoolbook.
My Name Is on a File On a case I was never summoned to, and a price I do not pay alone By Adham Hasanin Egyptian journalist and political writer, based in the Netherlands | July 2026 In 2024, I learned that my name had been entered into a case. Case number 1282. Listed as a "defendant." I was never summoned, and no one called to tell me the exact charge. I found out the way anyone in my position finds out — from a colleague, from a quick search of my own name, from another journalist who called to ask: "Did you know your name is on file?" I do not want to overdramatise the story. No cinematic manhunt, no car tailing me down a European street. What happened is simpler and crueller than that: a state thousands of kilometres away opened a file bearing my name, without my knowledge, without any way for me to defend myself within it, without even anyone standing before me to answer. The charge is not based on any act I committed. The charge is that I wrote. An article, an opinion, a tweet — it makes no difference. What matters is that the words were read, and someone decided they were dangerous enough to become a case number. I. How Do You Know You Are Accused? This question seems like a technicality, but it is in fact the heart of the whole matter. I received no official letter. No lawyer knocked on my door carrying documents. No one from an embassy or consulate called to inform me. The knowledge itself arrived by accident — a passing search, or a message from a friend asking: "Where did you see your name?" This small detail reveals something far larger than a mere administrative oversight. When you are not formally notified that you are accused, you do not even have a clear starting point from which to act. You do not know exactly when the file was opened. You do not know who decided to include your name. You do not know whether a hearing was held, a decision was made, or even whether an investigation took place at all. You simply discover, one day, that you have become "accused" within a legal system that never gave you the chance to know its rules. This ambiguity is not a flaw in the procedure; it is the procedure itself. A case opened without a clear announcement, with no trial date set, performs its full function even while suspended indefinitely. It does not need a conviction to frighten; it is enough that it simply exists. II. The Charge That Needs No Crime In conventional legal systems, a case begins with an act: theft, assault, fraud — something material that can be proven or disproven. But my case, like many others, began with a word. I stole nothing. I assaulted no one. I incited no violence, called for no chaos. I wrote an opinion. I analysed a policy. I criticised a decision. That is the entirety of it. And yet this simple act — writing — became the basis for a legal file bearing a number and classified under a security heading. The paradox is that this kind of charge requires no fixed standard. What counts as "dangerous" today may not be tomorrow, and vice versa. There is no published list of forbidden words, no clear criterion distinguishing incitement from opinion. This deliberate ambiguity — or perhaps unintentional, but effective regardless — leaves every writer living in a state of permanent unease: will this sentence be the one that opens a file bearing my name? III. The Real Danger Is Not to Me Many ask me: "Can they reach you in the Netherlands?" The honest answer: no, not directly. I am here, in a country governed by the rule of law, physically protected by Dutch police, and no one can arrest me on the basis of a case in another country absent a valid extradition treaty and supporting facts. This is not my first concern. My real concern is that this case does not target me alone. It targets those around me. My family in Egypt. People walking down the street, opening their front door, with no connection to politics whatsoever — and suddenly someone is asking about them because I wrote a word from here. This is not a threat spoken aloud. No one calls to say: "If you continue, we will do such-and-such." The message arrives without anyone saying it — through the kind of questions asked of my family, through their timing, through the silence that meets me when I try to learn the details. Sometimes it is a "routine" phone call from some office, asking about my place of residence, my activities, or people I am in contact with. None of it is an explicit threat, but the timing alone is enough to deliver the message. This is precisely the mechanism by which this kind of pursuit operates: it does not need to touch me physically to affect me. It is enough to make me know that the people I love are exposed to harm because of what I write. IV. I Am Not an Exception It would be easy for an article like this to turn into a personal complaint, and I am careful that it should not. Case 1282 is not an isolated incident, and if I stay silent about it I become complicit — unintentionally — in concealing a pattern that genuinely exists. There are others like me — far more than me — whose names sit in similar files, some of whom have no platform to speak from as I do. Journalists, activists, even ordinary people who never practised journalism but shared a post or left a comment. Case 1282 is not an exception; it is a method of operation. Someone writes from abroad, someone else decides they are "dangerous," and the matter shifts from opinion to legal file, without a real trial, without even a clear official announcement that a charge exists at all. More dangerously, this pattern is not confined to Egyptians alone, nor to any single country. It is a recurring tactic used by several regimes seeking to pursue voices beyond their borders without bearing the burden of actual proof or a transparent legal process. The open, unannounced file serves the same purpose everywhere: it frightens without convicting, and keeps the writer in a permanent state of tension without ever offering him the chance to defend himself. V. What Has Actually Changed in Me I will not say this made me stronger. The phrase is worn out, usually deployed to prettify a painful experience, and I refuse to do that. What actually happened is simpler and more honest: I began writing more slowly. Not less candidly — I still say what I believe, still criticise what deserves criticism. But I have become more aware that every sentence I write from here may carry a price I am not the only one paying. This awareness slows the writing, not because I am censoring myself out of fear for my own safety, but because I am thinking about who might pay the price on my behalf. And this is precisely the point of such a case, whether intended or a by-product of a broader mechanism. Actual arrest is not required for censorship to function. No summons is required, no trial, not even a clear charge. It is enough to know your name is written on a piece of paper somewhere, to make you think twice before writing the next time. VI. Why I Continue Regardless A reader might ask: if the price is this clear, why keep writing? Would silence not be safer, for you and for your family? The answer is not as heroic as it might sound, but it is honest: because silence does not solve the problem, it postpones and expands it. If I stopped, and others like me stopped, the mechanism that produced Case 1282 would keep operating with no voice to expose it. Files would keep opening, names would keep being entered, families would keep being questioned, with no one outside the circle of direct victims ever knowing this was happening at all. Writing about this experience, for all its risks, is the only way I have to make this pattern visible. When an article like this is published, the file no longer remains a secret between a government body and an isolated writer; it becomes part of a public record that other journalists, human rights organisations, and even international institutions can follow and document. Conclusion: A Price Not Paid Once I am still writing. More slowly than before, but still writing. And Case 1282 remains open, suspended, with no set date for a hearing or a verdict, exactly as it began. This very ambiguity is the message. An authority that opens a file and never closes it, never tries its subject, never even clearly states what the charge is — is not pursuing justice. It is pursuing something else entirely: that everyone who thinks of writing knows the price is possible, even if not certain. And that everyone who has already written carries that price with them wherever they go, however far they travel from the source of the case. This is the true price of a single word: not one arrest at one moment, but a continuous state of uncertainty that lives with you every time you open a blank page to write. Adham Hasanin is an Egyptian journalist and political writer based in the Netherlands.
Writers beware 🚨 There are soooo many scams targeting writers at the moment. I’m getting 2-3 scam emails a day. I guess AI has made it really quick & easy to target us more convincingly now (most include a flattering synopsis of your work etc.) Double/triple check everything!!! #WritersBeware #ScamAlert #WritingCommunity #Nospecificcountriesarementionedinthetweet.
Essays that are (almost) entirely written by AI are already going viral. I checked the comments under this piece, and no one seems to have noticed. Economist @tylercowen recently predicted that soon nobody will care anymore whether a text was written by AI or not. We'll all https://t.co/8tb2Arqw5T #AI #Writing #ViralContent #Nospecificcountrycodescanbedeterminedfromtheprovidedtweet.
Thoughts on Thinking * St. Wolfram: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2025/05/what-if-we-had-bigger-brains-imagining-minds-beyond-ours/?fbclid=IwY2xjawTZRChleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETB3djhKQmw2WlM4aEprUnpac3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHjoQzoUUrLyKkwQkIuWng5mwL2S_zvD5eyRrjO46hQA8LRNDl6U6YcFcdPd0_aem_MBtRvqGn7qHa0eGdAO0SDA * Fr. Chollet: https://x.com/fchollet/status/2038069289643806957?fbclid=IwY2xjawTZQXFleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEed2rG19MRplubo-4XARcGHptl8naU5bv9EtT-PCTmGpq5LkbDS2GQIbBSc50_aem_7S-ikIQghKMb8qf23kiE0A
Plush is an American rock band formed in Albany, New York in 2020. In April of 2020 during the COVID lockdowns, singer/songwriter/guitarist Moriah Formica and drummer Brooke Colucci made their first collaboration remotely from their homes, performing the song "Barracuda" by Heart. Moriah, who had been writing and recording music for years, gained a following when competing on season 13 of The Voice. Brooke (going by 'Brooke C.') had also gained a large internet following performing drum covers of various genres of music under the handle 'RockAngelBLC'. After the positive response to the "Barracuda" video, (7M views) Brooke brought in guitarist-turned-bassist Ashley Suppa, whom she met at the School of Rock program. Bella Perron, who was studying guitar at Berklee, responded to an ad on Instagram for a band looking for lead guitarist. She was put in touch with Moriah via Lzzy Hale of Halestorm. https://hvdommelen.nl/lp/Plush.html
